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I went to hook up my neighbor’s new Onkyo receiver tonight. I spent about three hours working on it.

I had to pull out the old receiver, and all of it’s wires, and install the new one, and then set it up. It was my first setup using HDMI connectors, and I can’t say it was a good experience.

He has an HD-DVD drive, that uses HDMI, a Dish Network Satellite receiver that uses DVI, and an old VCR.

Setting up the HD-DVD drive was simple. Popped it in, and connected the HDMI cable to the back of the Onkyo.

The satellite receiver, I thought was easy… got it hooked up, but couldn’t get any audio out of it. We were using a DVI-HDMI converter cable, and it took me a while to figure out that he still needed an audio cable! Duh, DVI doesn’t pass audio.

The VCR, on the other hand… that was a pain. I spent about two hours trying to connect it to his fancy new Onkyo stereo. No dice. I finally had to plug it directly into the TV for video. The audio went to the Onkyo OK, but he has to switch video inputs on his TV now, and I was hoping he wouldn’t have to do that. I think the stereo doesn’t “switch” the video between RCA and HDMI. I guess I can’t blame them, but it sure sucks to have to have multiple connections going to the TV.

Of course, after I left, he came back over to let me know that he didn’t have audio on his lower satellite channels… only the upper (HiDef) channels have audio, so I’ll have to go back tomorrow and look at that. I’ll probably have to plug-in an analog output for them.